Over 24 hours, participants from all across the country participated in the 8th edition of Oakridge Codefest. With over 100 participants, this iteration promised to foster intense competition, innovative problem-solving, and illustrate the promise of the tech industry’s next generation. This year, the contest was fiercer and more challenging than ever. The contestants were working to secure cash prizes from a pool of 1.5 lakhs by coding projects in cybersecurity, ed-tech innovation, human-computer interaction, sustainable agriculture, fin-tech innovation, and game development.

This year consisted of exciting new opportunities for the participants to win points and prizes through the newly developed “mini challenges”. The students competed in scavenger hunts, typing speed-races, and competitive programming. Students had the entire day and night at their disposal to work on their projects, submitting themselves to regular audits by the core-team. After the first audit, core-team member Devansh commented, “Codefest promotes a great community of learners, where people from all across India interact together. I get to see innovative technologies from our nation’s youth, and it has been the experience of my lifetime to organize this blockbuster event, as a member of the core-team”.

The winning team in the Junior category was Goober’s in the thick of it, with their game “Project Sustancia”. A phenomenally innovative survival game, the programme included many complex elements, including resource management tasks, fight scenes and a storyline of mystery and adventure! The game chronicled the journey of a character stranded on an island who was trying to escape. When giving the final presentation to the competition’s esteemed judges said that a key characteristic of the game that distinguished itself from other products in the marketplace was the intricate combat system which was simple enough for a novice to learn. In addition, the game incorporated characters that the users could interact with, which was made entirely from artificial intelligence. This blockbuster project impressed the judges immensely, securing the team’s 1st place victory!

The senior team winner was Team Quick with their project “Public Policy”. The problem they attempted to solve was how vast privacy policies are often too cumbersome and complex to fully go through. They coded a programme that utilised artificial intelligence to distinguish between the pros and cons of certain privacy policies, justifying the policy and rating it. It fetched and read news sentiment to understand the data security of the user. Moreover, it had a user-friendly interface that provided users with relevant information about their privacy policy without being overtly extensive. They used BS4, Web Scraping, NLTK Sentiment, Newspi and AI technology, like Gemini, to gain the 1st prize, winning them a whopping total of 30,000 rupees!

Oakridge Codefest stands at the forefront for young coders, looking for a place to belong and shine. It serves as an exemplary platform where students from across the country are allowed to display their programming talent to create innovative solutions to 21st century issues. As an IB continuum school, aiming to provide students with a holistic learning experience, Codefest is a flagship event that demonstrates our school’s commitment to preparing and propelling young coders into an evolving technological landscape.